“For the sake of God, our Maker”
(Count Arnaldos’ cry was strong),
“Old man, let me be partaker
In the secret of thy song.”
“Count Arnaldos! Count Arnaldos!
Hearts I read and thoughts I know—
Wouldst thou learn the ocean secret
In our galley thou must go.”
Longfellow wrote a rather anæmic ballad, “The Seaside and the Fireside,” on the Arnaldos episode, incorporating several of the lines. Some years ago I published an adaptation of it, altering the environment and changing the metre, and this the reader may perhaps be complacent enough to accept as an illustration of the manner in which “this sort of thing is done.”